A few days ago I said that we wouldn't be holding a CTO breakfast in August. I was wrong. In fact, we'll be holding the breakfast on August 28 in conjunction with the Utah Open Source Conference at Salt Lake Community College. Please mark your calendars.
If you're a regular breakfast attendee, I have discount codes for UTOSC that I can give you. Just send me a note.
]]>With the high price of gasoline, lots of people are looking for ways to save money on gas. The simplest method is simply to slow down. The drag on a vehicle goes up with the fourth power of the speed. That implies a very crisp knee in the curve.
Of course, the standard answer would be "lower the speed limit to 55MPH." But that would really be a bummer for people on long trips. We have better technology than in the 70's. Most people cruising down the highway at 75 don't know that they could slow down 10 or 20 MPH and save real money. Let's give them data. Here's my proposal.
Why don't cars come with a meter that shows how much you're spending right now on gas. Turn instantaneous mileage into instantaneous dollars and you'll see real behavior change. That leaves people free to choose and most will choose saving money when there's no compelling reason not to while leaving people the freedom to spend money to get where they need to be.
One step further: create an online game where people can compete for best performance over a given route.
I'm looking for an iPhone app that does this for starters.
]]>This is the code I added to the _update_twitter function:
my $bitly = LWP::UserAgent->new;
my $url_response =
$bitly->get("http://bit.ly/api?url=" . $obj->permalink);
my $small_url;
if($url_response->is_success) {
$small_url = $url_response->content;
} else {
$small_url = $obj->permalink;
}
Of course, you also have to change the line that creates the twitter message to use the new shortened URL ($small_url) instead of the permalink directly.
]]>Here's the top ten shows on IT Conversations for June:
Joel and Jeff discuss Apple's WWDC (and the correct pronunciation of OS X), the use of JavaScript on modern web sites, affiliate programs, and much more.
Joel and Jeff discuss the fine art of listening, source control, the risks of being an internal IT developer, and the state of current mobile platforms. Oh, and how to clean the toilet.
Joel and Jeff try to avoid talking over each other while discussing data generation, full text searching, cross-site scripting, Markdown, Microsoft's Silverlight, and how to get a job at Fog Creek software.
A presentation by Scott Ambler at the SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series in 2003 entitled "Are You Agile or Are You Fragile?" The software industry is shifting from large-scale, prescriptive processes that mandate rigorous procedures and policies to lighter, more agile methodologies. Are these agile processes appropriate for your organization? If so, which should you consider adopting? What challenges can you expect and how can you overcome them? (Audio from IT Conversations. This is a long one: nearly two hours.)
In the first episode hosted by the IT Conversations, Joel and Jeff discuss Joel's keynote address at the recent Rails conference, the attitudes of some of those who don't use Macs, and Clay Shirky's recent book, "Here Comes Everybody".
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with biologist and author Stuart Kauffman, about his latest book "Reinventing the Sacred," which discusses a new way to look at science, the universe, and the mystery of life.
Ken Ledeen and Harry Lewis are co-authors (with Hal Abelson) of the forthcoming book "Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion." All three authors are veteran information technologists. On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks to Ledeen and Lewis to reflect on the rapid and sweeping changes these technologies bring.
The Connected Innovators program showcases emerging technologies and new business ideas likely to make an impact on the networked future. After a competitive application process, Supernova's Kevin Werbach and TechCrunch's Michael Arrington invite a dozen top company leaders on stage to present their best, quick pitch. Then, a panel of start-up experts analyzes the offerings, judging their potential in the marketplace, and their meaning for the tech industry.
"You Thought it was Easy: Wrestling Gold from Today's Software Projects." The benefits of Agile are many, the implementation is easy, and the problems are daunting. Ken Schwaber, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium & Chairman of the Agile Alliance, discusses the obstacles to wresting the gold from today's software projects. (IT Conversations audio from SDForum Agile Summit.)
Mark Shuttleworth began Ubuntu in 2004 with a dedicated group of developers intent on creating a revolutionary new Linux desktop. Now, many in the Linux community are calling it the Linux desktop for real people. After three years of phenomenal growth, Shuttleworth sat down with Tim O'Reilly at the first ever O'Reilly Media sponsored Ubuntu Live Conference. During the interview, Tim asks Mark for insight into Ubuntu's meteoric rise and about key challenges for Ubuntu going forward.
Interestingly the Ambler and Scwaber shows are not recent, but getting a lot of play and quite a few ratings (in the hundreds). Stack Overflow is doing well, as you'd expect given the audience both Jeff and Joel bring to the podcast.
Since Doug put up the new ratings system, the overall number of ratings per show are up considerably--all of these ratings numbers have enough behind them to make them credible.
]]>
We're doing the July CTO breakfast a little early this month because
of Pioneer day. For those of you not familiar with Utah,
Pioneer day is a state holiday on the 24th of July and it's a pretty
big deal. Celebrates the day the first pioneers entered the Salt Lake
Valley in 18481847.
We'll do the usual thing on Friday. Anyone with an interest in technology products and companies it welcome to come. Hopefully Phil Burns will come and we can get into heated discussions about the iPhone. :-) If you've got other things you'd like to discuss, bring them up.
There's no breakfast in August. After that, here's the schedule:
Here's a Google calendar for the breakfast.
We'll meet in the Novell Cafeteria (Building G) at 8am and go until 10am. I hope to see you there.
]]>I've had mixed feelings about whether to upgrade my iPhone to the new 3G model. Ultimately, I get three things: 3G, GPS, and 8G more RAM than I have now. None of those alone were enough to tip me and together, they were marginal. Consequently I wasn't all in a tizzy over today's iPhone availability. Still, since I had a few friends who were excited to get one and were coming up to the Apple store in Salt Lake to get one, I figured I'd tag along and maybe pick on up. What I wasn't ready for was 7 or 8 hour lines.
I figured that iPhones would be plentiful. Beside, it wasn't the launch of a 1.0 product (and hence less excitement). On top of all that, after the doors opened last June the lines went so fast that I figured you'd be able to show up anytime today and waltz in and get one. Wrong.
What changed between last year and this one was the in-store activation. Last year, you bought your phone and took it home to activate it. Yeah! That was a heavenly experience. This year--to curb people buying phones so and then unlocking them--in-store activation is required. It's taking, according to some of the Apple Store employees working the line, 20-30 minutes.
That's when the activation system is working at all. There have been, according to reports, frequent break downs. Consequently, the line moves in fits and starts; lurching toward the door.
The whole experience, as a result, has been much more frustrating than last year. People waited in line last year and this year. But that's where the similarity ends. People aren't anxiously waiting for the doors to open and then rushing in to buy the product they've been lusting for. Instead, the doors have been open for 7 hours and hundreds of people are still lined up waiting for the machine to serve them because of IT problems. Big difference Apple.
]]>I'm at the Utah Technology Council's CTO P2P forum this morning. Nate Bowler, a former collegue at Excite@Home and CTO of @Task is speaking about SaaS, software as a service.
Nate says that his number one take-away from this talk is: Pick a market that is underserved or could benefit from the improved delivery model of a SaaS platform and serve it in a non-trivial manner. Emphasis on "non-trivial." Often companies dumb down their SaaS offering. Nate stresses the importance of using the same technology stack for on-premise and on-demand options.
In order to deliver SaaS, you have to be able to support billing, provisioning, and back office tools over and above the base level of software functionality. Beyond that you probably also need multi-tenancy.
And, of course, there's the scalability issue. A critical question is how scalability concerns line up with the business model. What are the hardware demands per customer? Per user? This information needs to be fed back into the product pricing.
Billing can be a big deal. Many people start out with home grown billing systems that limit their flexibility. Most companies start off with a single "this is how we're going to price things" plan, but clients have different ideas. Are you going to pass up a client because they want to pay in a way that you're billing system doesn't support? Instead you'll probably end up constantly hacking the billing system.
You need to be able to monitor every component of your application stack: systems, network, and processes; availability; application functionality; and user experience. In addition to monitoring these things, you need to be watching trends to avoid surprises.
Security is obviously a big deal. You need instrusion detecion systems, SAS70 compliance for business processes, and external auditing of security issues like XSS, data partitioning, and software patch levels to protect customer application data. Automated testing needs to be rigorous.
Some thoughts from Nate on pricing:
@Task has had good luck selling on-premise software with term licensing.
One of the ideas Nate brings up that's pretty interesting is implementing a Digg-like feature for your product roadmap and letting your customers vote for features that are important to them.
@Task has found that most customers opt for on-demand rather than on-premise contrary to conventional wisdom. Similarly, they haven't found that a self-sign up with free trial was an effective strategy for generating leads. This may be specific to @Task that has a fairly complex, group-oriented product. The enterprise nature of the activity means that free trials have to be carefully orchestrated.
]]>Ross Mayfield notes that in an Apple retails store "50% of the space is for retail sales and 50% for service and support." He goes on to contrast that with places like Fry's or Best Buy. I'm always amazed when I go into an Apple store: they're happening places. If you're in retail, visit an Apple store and then go back to your place. Seem kinda quiet and dead. Yeah, I thought so.
Ross goes on:
What Best Buy is missing is the fact that they provide no after market value add with their retail -- in comparison to buying and servicing with an e-commerce vendor. If I buy something in person I expect a person to be able to help me when things go wrong. At least during the manufactures warranty, and I might pay to extend that period with the retailer.
But I think Apple gets something more than the value of customer experience. According to the Consortium of Service Innovation, there is an iceberg effect for product knowledge. 90% of conversations about supporting products never touch the company. Only 10% touch the call center. And 1% of this service and product quality knowledge are assimilated.
In other words, Apple's trying to capture more of the product knowledge conversations. That goes beyond mere "customer experience" and gets to building relationship.
Finally Ross gets to the key question for online retailers:
For your business online, what porportion is dedicated to retail vs. support? When not constricted by the boundaries of physical space, and can be empowered through community, where do you draw that line? What crosses that line is a process not unlike osmosis, where energy is released with the right balance.
When I was at Internet Retailer it was clear that one of the hot features for ecommerce Web sites was customer reviews. More and more places are following Amazon's lead and adding places for customers to talk to other customers (and inform the retailer in the process). This is a great way to capture more of the customer product conversation and capitalize on it in order to keep shoppers coming back for more.
]]>Doc Searls must have spent some of his convalescence deep in thought. His recent essay Saving the Net III: Understanding its Frames is a great piece on how we understand and don't understand the Net. This is a long essay. You'll actually have to do some reading if you want to get the meat of Doc's argument. But it's worth the time.
]]>David Eaves posted a piece overlaying the Firefox 3 Pledge Map and Thomas Barnett's map that divides the world into the "the functioning core" and the "non-integrated gap."
As you might expect, there's a high correlation. People in the gap aren't connected, so they have less access to computers, use the 'Net less, and participate in open source projects less. There are some exceptions--like Scandinavia on one side and Columbia and Turkey on the other.
David makes this comment:
Non-Integrated Gap countries with the most pledges are Iran, Turkey, Venezuela, Peru, and Indonesia -- interesting list. Seems to suggest that many of the countries the US tries to isolate are actually the most connected.
I too find this ironic. I think that the Bush administration has made a huge mistake in not pushing these countries to integrate more fully. Forget their governments, their citizens want to be connected and once they are, the policies of their governments will follow them into the functioning core. They have to.
As Tom points out, terrorism is "what's left" after the cold war and I see it as a reaction to connectivity. Terrorists, while exploiting the connectivity of the 'Net, would deny that connectivity to people because it leads them away from the fundamentalist societies that the terrorists promote.
David's analysis is just one more data point in the argument that some of the world's seemingly most dangerous countries have citizens who are ready to connect. The world (i.e. functioning core) needs to take advantage of that.
As an aside, I just pre-ordered Tom's new book 'Great Powers: America and the World After Bush' from Amazon. I'll schedule another IT Conversations interview with him after the book comes out. I had a great conversation with him a few years back.
]]>As long as we're on the subject of Technometria stats, here's the browser breakdown for last month on Technometria:
Roughly two-thirds of the visitors to Technometria were using something other than Internet Explorer. Granted, this is a pretty geeky crowd.
Of the Firefox users, roughly 30% were using version 3. Of the IE users, roughly 40% were using version 6. Only four visitors the entire month were using IE 5.5. I had a few IE 8 visitors.
]]>It's funny to me which stories and posts seem to take off and which don't. Sometimes when I'm writing a post I just know that it's going to get traction, but most of the time, it's hit or miss. Here's a list of the top ten posts on Technometria for June. Only two of them were written in June.
The one that is the most amazing to me is the "free mobile calls" post. It's about how to use a family plan and an autodialer connected to Skype to get reduce mobile call bills. It's usually the number one hit on Google under free mobile calls, so it gets a lot of traffic. What waste of bandwidth. :-)
]]>For the last three weeks I've been riding my bike to work when occasion permits. Unfortunately, that usually only works out to a few times per week. I live in Lindon and work at Thanksgiving Point, about 17 miles one way. One of the first things I discovered was that I needed a good way to carry my laptop.
I have a backpack and a messenger bag. I immediately dispensed with the backpack since it's up high and made me too hot. The messenger bag keeps the weight low, but after 17 miles, it's a boat anchor around you neck.
What I needed was a pannier big enough to carry a laptop. I used to commute by bike regularly but that was 15 years ago. My panniers from that time are small and not nearly big or sturdy enough to carry a 15 inch Macbook Pro.
After a week or so of searching and reading message boards I came across the Arkel Commuter. This is, as far as can tell, the best commuter pannier around.
At $159, it's not cheap, but after using it a few times, I think it's well worth it. The load is low and the bike is doing the work. The bag is well made and the laptop is secure. I especially like the cams that lock it to the rack--the last thing I need is my laptop flying off the bike on a bump.
]]>When I was at Internet Retailer in Chicago a few weeks ago, I heard at least three speakers give as story that, abstracted, went something like this:
We started off building our own ecommerce platform, then we switched to a vendor supported product. After we almost went broke, we went back to building our own ecommerce platform.
Your reaction to that might be like mine was: "why would a retailer want to spend money building their own platform?" After all, shouldn't they concentrate on their core competence--retailing--and leave software development to the experts?
Here's what it comes down to: most online retailers aren't selling unique products. They're sourcing product from a supply chain that their competitors have access to as well. So, they're all selling the same thing with roughly the same margins. What do they compete on? Shopper experience.
The one thing that can make a huge difference in their top-line revenue is the overall experience that a shopper has when they visit the online store. If it's slow, ugly, full of friction with too many clicks, breaks, doesn't offer features shoppers expect, and so on, shoppers will go somewhere else.
All of these depends on the platform and if you're using the same platform as your competitor, you're reduced your degrees of freedom substantially.
Amazon, of course, is the biggest example of a company that uses a custom ecommerce platform. They're a premiere technology company because that's what it takes to be the Net's biggest retailer. Amazon wouldn't be Amazon if they were running on ATG (ignoring issues of scale). Amazon is the biggest retailer because they run their own platform--not the other way around.
Every business has to know how they compete and who they compete with. In retail you might compete on a unique product, but usually you're competing on price and experience--and only the latter is sustainable.
]]>When I proposed (PDF) that the State of Utah move from the state.ut.us domain they'd been using to the more easily branded utah.gov, Al Mansel, the President of the Utah Senate asked me why he couldn't have utah.leg since "gov" meant governor (don't ask). Now, he can.
Opening up TLDs and allowing other than ASCII characters is, as they say, a huge step. I hope it's not one into the abyss.
]]>